Petit Bouschet

Petit Bouschet was bred for color. Louis Bouschet made the cross in 1829, and he recorded it as Aramon by Teinturier du Cher; DNA markers later confirmed the same two parents, Teinturier and Aramon, which VIVC gives in the reverse order. A. Bedel, in his 1890 Les nouvelles méthodes de culture de la vigne et de vinification, wrote that growers valued it for the color of its juice, blended with that of other grapes, rather than for its quality. Its own child is better known: in 1855 Henri Bouschet crossed it with Grenache, and markers confirm that Alicante Henri Bouschet is the result.

Its Gironde record is short. In October 1881 the international phylloxera congress met in Bordeaux, and its report describes the Domaine du Vallier at Langoiran, where M. Delbruck had grown American vines since 1875. His French vines grafted onto American roots, “Cabernet, Malbec, Merlau, Petit-Bouschet, Sémillon blanc, Chasselas et autres”, were more recent, the report says, and “only at their first fruit.” One caution for readers of older books: at Saint-Émilion “bouschet” meant the cabernets, as Édouard Féret explained in his 1908 book on Saint-Émilion and its wines, so the name alone does not point to this grape.

Oldest record in my library: Congrès international phylloxérique de Bordeaux, Compte rendu général, 1881 (Domaine du Vallier, Langoiran)